Google Solves All Blind Items
The internet: at least it's good for investigating things. Like that crazy kid who shot up Northern Illinois University, for example. What did he say on Myspace? What did he say in school papers? These bits and pieces of online information are the new currency of citizen-level investigative reporting. They allowed bloggers to correctly name the shooter before his name had been released [Chicago Tribune]. But the vast and heretofore useless collection of random, unrelated facts on the web also has another, far more important use: providing us the answer to all Blind Item gossip.
Long staples of the gossip industry, it now appears that blind items will soon become relics due to the increasing power of the Google. Let's take an example from today's Page Six: "WHICH local reporter got sick to his stomach after he found out the Penthouse Pet with whom he'd been making out had just had sex with another man?"
In the old days, such an item would inspire a bunch of you to sit around your office's water cooler, a popular destination for gossip, and speculate back and forth about who the subject might be. In the modern age, though, we just enter the key terms into the Google—"New York reporter sick Penthouse Pet"—and bingo, up pops our answer, right after the original Post item:
It was Anderson Cooper all along. Do you now understand how the internet combines the accuracy of whispered office rumors with the quick reaction time of a wild, unrestrained mob, thirsty for blood (answers) no matter what the cost? Let's try another blind item, this one from Michael Musto: "Which top anchor is a bottom?" We have a theory, so we'll check it with the Google's robotic memory of wisdom:
The very first answer. It's not necessary to add much to that. Here we see that Google, the smartest technology in the universe, tells us that Anderson Cooper is the answer to all blind items. Not much point to continuing the practice from now on. Let's all turn our attention to loftier pursuits.
